Time Is Noon (24 page)

“You will see what is needed,” he murmured. “When you get there you will see what is to be done—I feel sure you will be guided.” He gazed wistfully into space.

Upon a glowing afternoon she walked to South End. She wanted to walk, to walk along the rough road, searching passionately for every beauty. There was an immense dead oak once struck by lightning wrapped like a blazing tower in crimson woodbine. Here upon a rock a tiny flat vine crawled like a small scarlet serpent. The sunshine poured down from a golden heaven. The far hills were blue. In the streets of South End the sunshine glittered on every tin can and bit of broken glass and red ray of dress. They loved red here. The babies wore red slips and the young girls wore red blouses and red ribbons in their tightly braided hair. Red geraniums bloomed in rusty cans, and late zinnias shone cerise and scarlet from careless seeds.

Into the chapel they crowded, dark skins, red ribbons, rolling restless black eyes. They gathered, black skin, brown skin, skin of amber. They called zestfully to one another. They did not quiet until her father began to speak. Then they listened in a stillness that was not quiet. It was silent as a storm is silent before wind breaks. When her father announced the hymn, a small brassy organ began to throb and instantly the singing burst forth, loud, syncopated, full of wild music. “Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,” they sang, swaying, moving, surging.

… But there was no peace—they wanted no peace. Oh, who wanted peace? She caught the excitement in her own blood—no peace, no peace—how could there be peace if one were alive? Only let life flow in upon her—let all life come, O God! She flung out her heart in the cry. Suddenly she thought of Francis. Was that life, too? He had found a sort of life here. She looked over the crowd quickly. No, she was glad she knew no one among them all. Suddenly she felt she could do nothing for them—nothing for any of them. Let them live—let them live—let all life go on. She did not listen to anything her father said.

When he sat down she rose and went out quickly. Behind her the people crowded out of the chapel, hurrying to laugh and to talk. They overtook her and she saw that they had taken off their shoes and were walking barefoot down the dusty road, carrying their tied shoes in their hands. They were laughing, and bursting into fragments of singing, and by twos and threes they stopped at cheap ruined houses. She went on out of the town and into the country road. On her way home Mrs. Mark tapped on the windowpane and she went in.

“Where’ve you been?” said Mrs. Mark from the bed.

“I told Father I’d help him at the mission—but I think I just can’t,” she said. She couldn’t keep from answering Mrs. Mark straightly.

“What you want to help for?” said Mrs. Mark. “They don’t need help—they have a grand time. Go on home and find something to make you half as happy as they are.”

She looked at Joan crossly. She could no longer move her right leg. Now, before she could get onto her crutches, she must shift her leg like a log with both hands.

“Get along and do as I say,” she said.

“Yes, Mrs. Mark,” said Joan.

She hesitated, hating as she always did to leave a creature so helpless. “Go along,” said Mrs. Mark. “I’ve got to get up and stir up my supper.” No one ever saw Mrs. Mark get up. And so Joan went away. She went away down the road, the sun smoldering crimson among the vivid trees.

The air was completely still, cold without chill. Next Sunday, she thought suddenly, it would surely be too cold to sit upon the porch. She would have to light the fire in the square sitting room and let him come in. She had not wanted him to come in. One excuse after another she had made to keep him waiting.

She did not want to open the door of the house to him. But since it was so cold now, if he came into the front sitting room, and if she said to her father, “Come in to the fire, where we are,” if her father sat there, then the man could not touch her lips. He would have planned to touch her lips. She withdrew from the imagination of his thick pale mouth, wind-cracked, dry. She felt again the hard coarse pressure of his great arms about her. That was last time. … But if her father were there, she would be safe. But perhaps she did not really want to be safe. She pushed away decision, recklessly. Whatever came, let it come.

Yes, Mrs. Mark was right. She must tell her father that she could not help him—not at the mission. The people were stronger than she. They would sweep her into themselves, as they absorbed into their own richer rhythm the tunes of the hymns. If she stayed among them, if she were often near them, hearing them sing, soon she would be singing with them and not against them. She laughed softly, remembering, walking down the road alone, with what determination her father had held to time and tune, his look absorbed, his thin, high voice steadfast against the rush of throbbing other voices. Through the deep November dusk she heard again the beat and rhythm, the beat and crying, of the dark crowd. Her body fell into the measure of the beat and movement as she walked, and in her ears her blood pulsed—no use, no use for her to try to save someone when she could not save herself. She wanted earth, not heaven; life, not salvation from it. Her feet stepped the dusty country road to the tune of old desire. She was as light as air, striding through the potent windless night.

… She became aware of a horse’s cantering step, and she paused and stood aside among the weeds and the rhythm paused a moment in her, waiting. She looked through the dusk and saw an awkward sturdy man astride a thick-boned farm beast. She knew at once who it was.

“Well, look who’s here!”

It was the phrase he used every time he saw her. She drew back a little farther from his path.

“Good evening, Bart!” she answered. She was the more fastidious in her own speech because his speech repelled her. But he did not notice her withdrawal. He leaped down from his horse and came near. In the twilight she noticed suddenly, unwillingly, upon the open roadway, the fields about them, that he looked better than she had ever seen him. He wore his work clothes, blue jeans and a coarse blue shirt open at the collar, the sleeves rolled above his elbows. The twilight hid his stiff dry lips, his thick nose, squat along the bridge. There was only his outline—his square shoulders, his thighs, his limbs. He looked huge, magnificent as a bull. The turn of his head was set well upon his strong thick neck. Here, where he belonged, he was a handsome man, a fine animal. When he came near her she could smell an odor of hay and earth—a clean, hearty smell. She leaned away from him, breathless.

“Where you been?” he cried at her. “It’s luck, meeting up with you like this!”

She felt his instinctive movement to touch her, to put his arms around her waist. She felt his arms about her waist. Now his hand was creeping toward her breast. He had not touched her breast before. She stood still, despising herself, and unwillingly longing for his hand to touch her breast. Yet when the touch came, she sprang away from it.

“I must go home,” she said, her voice stifled, her blood roaring in her ears. “I must go home. Let me go!”

“Well, well, well!” he exclaimed in mock surprise. “Who’s holding you?”

“You are,” she answered desperately. But she had not moved.

“Who—me?” He pressed her breast slowly.

“Yes,” she whispered, sick, and longing.

He dropped his hand suddenly.

“Who—me?” he said again and laughed.

She turned her look on him and unwillingly she saw him, a big handsome man, handsome in his own place. Without a word she started to run into the dusk, desperately, home.

Inside the front door she stood motionless, her hand upon the door she had just closed. The house was utterly silent about her. The familiar rooms, the furniture, the clock in the hall, everything was as she had always known it. It was intolerably still, intolerably shabby, empty, hopeless. Under her stare the familiar rooms grew strange and aloof from her.

“How could I let him touch me?” she asked herself wildly. The house remained silent about her. She was shut off from all of life in this house.

“Hannah!” she screamed suddenly. “Hannah—Hannah!”

From the attic Hannah’s voice dropped down thin and distant. “What you want?”

“Where’s Father? Isn’t he home yet?” She had no one else left.

“No, not yet.”

“I’m going to find him,” she cried.

She darted from the house again, and at the instant his old car drew up at the door and he stepped backward out of it in his absurd careful way. He was never quite used to the car.

“Father—Father,” she cried at him.

He turned his head. “Yes, what is it, Joan?” He began collecting his books.

She wanted to go to him and lean against him. She wanted to feel someone near her. She had never so leaned against him, but being now impelled by need she took his hand. “I’m glad you’re home. I was worrying a little.”

“But I am not beyond my usual hour.” he said mildly, in surprise. “I am not usually home before six. I remained to speak to the people.”

His hand hung in hers, delicate, bloodless, cool.

“Anyway, you’re home now,” she said breathlessly. “Come in to supper. I’ll open a jar of the red cherries. Let’s light the fire. Maybe there’s a letter from Rose or maybe even Frank.”

He did not reply. He wanted to take his hand away, but he did not wish to be unkind. He let it lie one instant uncomfortably and then withdrew it. She did not prevent him. It was impossible to cling to that hand.

In the night she woke. It was raining. The night had turned warm and wet and still. There was only the soft downward rush of rain. Suddenly she felt safe again, safe and secure, after all, in this house where she had been born. The rain shut her in, the rain held her safe against intrusion. She slept deeply, and in the morning she woke, quieted. The day was slumberous with rain and quiet, and day after day the week passed. She sat by her window, sewing. She looked over all her dresses one by one. She still needed nothing new—there was no reason yet for buying anything new.

She woke on Saturday morning to sunshine, to scold herself and to laugh with relief. Tomorrow she would tell Bart never to come again. She did not want anything from him. She had so much. She was very silly. For they all needed her as much as ever. Rose had said in her very last letter:

Please buy me two pairs of black stockings and a paper of pins and three spools of white cotton thread and some needles. Such little things we cannot buy here. We are now wearing native garments, but the needles are blunt and short and hard to hold. You will rejoice with us that on Sunday four more, three women and one man, were received—

She would buy the things today. She would find Rob’s father in the store and say, “They go all the way to China, Mr. Winters, to Rob and to Rose.” He would want to put in something—he was so kind and gentle and always wanting to do nice things, even if they were rather silly things. He kept giving Mrs. Winters bottles of perfume, or when he went to New York to get his stock he would bring her home a flashy ring or a glass necklace. Mrs. Winters grew so provoked with him. If the jewelry cost too much she would say plainly, “I’m going to send it right back, Henry Winters. Me with earrings!” Sometimes she could only get credit, and then she had to buy whatever she could, so she bought flat silver. She had a great deal of flat silver.

But certainly Mr. Winters would want to put in a gift for Rose. Joan’s mind ran over the big one-room store. What would be nice? Rose had never mentioned the peach nightgown. Joan, remembering, had a pang of missing it still. It was so pretty. She would probably never have another so pretty.

She leaped from her bed and was suddenly gay. The house was itself again. Rose and Francis were alive, needing her—her dear old father. She was gay with him at breakfast and laughed when he looked at her in bewilderment.

“I’m only making fun,” she cried, and dropped a light kiss upon the ends of his white hair. “The rain’s over!”

“Your mother used to have days,” he remarked with mild patience.

Her heart shadowed. “There—I’ll stop teasing you,” she said remorsefully.

Well, it didn’t matter. She must get the things for Rose. She would buy a little gift, too, to put in. She had several dollars saved. She could get some ribbon—but there they wore native dress. Why didn’t Rose tell her how they looked? Or perhaps a pair of silk stockings. It was impossible to believe that Rose did not secretly adore silk stockings. She put on her hat and her old brown coat and went down the street, singing under her breath.

In the store at the far end, among the cotton stuffs, she saw Ned Parsons and turned her head. She did not want to bother with him today, but probably she would have to—he’d call or come bustling up. But he did not. When she glanced toward him he seemed to be absorbed in a list he was checking. He did not seem to see her. She searched for Mr. Winters, and found him at last in the stock room, surrounded by half-opened packages and boxes. He stood tall and narrow, his too narrow shoulders drooping about his narrow chest. It was known that he was “consumptive” and only Mrs. Winters’ constancy and determination had kept him alive. Left to himself he would not have touched milk or butter or eggs. But twice a day she came to the store with a tumbler of eggnog and stood watching him while he drank it. Everybody knew that once, when he was young, in desperation he had poured it into a bale of new white cotton sheeting while she was looking about, but she had caught him because he had poured it too quickly. The stuff had slipped down the sized cloth in trickles of yellow. She had never forgotten it. “The wicked waste!” she had cried hundreds of times in remembering it. Hundreds upon hundreds of times she had stood watching him drink the eggnog down, never trusting him. Once goaded by the smiles of clerks he had muttered, “You don’t need to stand there—seems as if all the times I’ve drunk it would count.”

But she had retorted, “I’ve never felt I knew exactly what you’d do next, Henry Winters! If it wasn’t for me, you’d be in your grave.” His life, saved thus daily, belonged to her.

“Mr. Winters!” Joan called across an aisle, beaming at him. “I’ve come to get some things for Rose. I thought you’d be interested.”